Evolutionarily, human experience has been ‘transformed’ from a ‘green retreat’ of diffuse ‘simple pleasure’ to the ‘shriek’ of machines, to more ‘complex’ states of mind. I would replace the word complex with ‘hurried, distracted, non-present, sick, diseased (dis-eased, ill at ease).
Leo Marx, 1964

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The Machine in the Garden

There is a machine in the garden.

It is not a big machine like the ones that disturbed our pastoral past with noisy smoke, rustic surfaces, and destructive edges.

This machine is small, slim, soft to the touch. It enchants us with slick glass that produces colorful life-like interactions. It tickles everyone’s fancies.

In fact, this small machine rendered all the big machines in the garden useless, redundant. It can create new worlds without physical materials and allow us defy every law of physics so that we can challenge time and space.

We can be nowhere and everywhere at the same time thanks to this small machine. It has redefined our very nature. Humanity as a social being is now a hypothesis. Social interaction is now an option, just like religion, and like any religion, there are new dogmas, addictive practices that make this small machine the most influential invention in the history of mankind.

So much depends upon a small machine…

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Thanks for your reading

This was my entry to @mariannewest and @latino.romano’s 5-Minute Daily Freewrite: Wednesday Prompt: BIG MACHINE. You can see the details here.

Make sure you visit the Freewrite House!!!